Advisor, Academia Vitae, the first private university in Dutch history,
2007-2010, Deventer, The Netherlands (Founder and Dean: Arjo Klamer).
R.I.P.: A great idea, Klamer's is: but 2007-2008 was a tough year for
launching the new school.

Helen Potter Award for Best Paper in Social Economics (2002): “PauperFiction in Economic Science: `Paupers in Almshouses’ and the Odd Fit of Oliver Twist,” Review of Social Economy. Awarded by the Association for Social Economics.

Mini-symposium
on The Cult of Statistical Significance, June 24, 2008, University
of Aarhus, Denmark, Center for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series
(CREATES).

Plenary
Lecture, "The Culture of Statistical Significance," Association for Heterodox Economics, University of Leeds, UK,
2004

Invited
Lecture for special session on Student's t - 100 Years Later, "Guinnessometrics:
The Economic Foundation of Student's t," 24th
meeting of the International Biometric Society, in conjunction with the
Irish Statistical Association, July 16, 2008, University College Dublin

Lecture and Discussion, Biomedical Computing Interest Group (BCIG) Book
Club, Ziliak’s and McCloskey’s The Cult of Statistical Significance: How
the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives (2008), National
Institutes of Health, Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD, April 22, 2010.

Berger
Seminar and Inaugural Lecture for the Quantitative Institute for the Social
Sciences (QISS), "The Cult of Statistical Significance," University of Kentucky,
Department of Economics, Department of Statistics, and
Quantitative Institute for the Social Sciences, Lexington, KY, October 2009

<< cited by RePEc[Research Papers in Economics] as the 4th most frequently downloaded article in the economics profession, Winter 2004. The RePEc database contains over 176,000 published journal articles >>

<< cited as one of the “Important Texts” of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement, www.paecon.net >>

13. “Freedom to Exchange and the Rhetoric of Economic Correctness.” In Warren J. Samuels and Jeff E. Biddle, eds., Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 21-A (Elsevier Press, 2003), pp. 331-41.

14. “Palimpsest and ‘The New Economic Methodology.’” In Warren J. Samuels and Jeff E. Biddle, eds., Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 21-A (Elsevier Press, 2003), pp. 194-207.

Published in a symposium on Ziliak-McCloskey research concerning the use and abuse of significance testing in economics and other disciplines. Reprinted simultaneously in Econ Journal Watch (www.econjournalwatch.org).

<< cited by Science Direct as the 2nd most frequently downloaded paper in the Journal of Socio-Economics, Fall 2005>>

21. “Poor Law—United States.” Pp. 274-7 in John M. Herrick and Paul H. Stuart, eds., Encyclopedia of Social Welfare in the United States (New York: Sage Publications, 2004).

22. “Why I Left Alan Greenspan To Seek Economic Significance: The Confessions of an α-Male,” Rethinking Marxism 17 (1, January 2005), pp. 45-58.

23. (Inaugural article in a new series) “On Autobiography: Recommended Readings (and Re-readings) in Economic History.” Published on EH-Teach, an on-line publication of the Economic History Association, September 2005.

25. “Heterodox Economics and the Resurrection of Economic Significance,” in John T. Harvey and Robert
F. Garnett, Jr., eds., Future Directions for Heterodox Economics, University of Michigan Press, 2008,
pp. 95-115.

28. “Public Assistance: Colonial Times to the 1920s” (with the assistance of Joan Underhill Hannon). A chapter in the millennial edition of Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to the Present (Cambridge University Press,
2006)*. Eds. Susan B. Carter, Richard Sutch, et al.

What Reviewers Say: "For starters, it [Historical Statistics
of the United States] weighs 29 pounds. It has five volumes. And it's
densely packed with more than a million numbers that measure America in
mind-boggling detail, from the average annual precipitation in Sweet
Springs, Mo., to the wholesale price of rice in Charleston S.C., in 1707...
The new edition, which is also available in an online version, is a gold
mine for scholars, students and assorted nerds and numbers crunchers..."

29.“Signifying
Nothing: Reply to Hoover and Siegler.” With Deirdre McCloskey, Journal of Economic Methodology.
March 2008. SEE IT NOW

30.“Positive Social Science,” in William Darity,
Jr., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
2nd Edition, 2007.

31.“Normative Social Science,” in William Darity,
Jr., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
2nd Edition,
2007.

32.“Rhetoric,” in William Darity,
Jr., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
2nd Edition,
2007.

49. "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose:
Student, Fisher, and the False Promise of Randomization," in G. DeMartino
and D. McCloskey, eds.,
Considerations on Professional Economic Ethics: Views from the Economics
Profession and Beyond, Oxford University
Press, forthcoming 2014.

56. Review of Gary R. Lowe and P. Nelson Reid’s The Professionalization of Poverty: Social Work and the Poor in the Twentieth Century (Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999), Journal of Economic History (Fall 2000).

71. Review of Jonathan A. Glickstein’s American Exceptionalism/American Anxiety: Wages, Competition, and Degraded Labor in the Antebellum United States, International Review of Social History 49 (2, 2004).

72. Review of Jocelyn Elise Crowley’s The Politics of Child Support in America, EH-Net (the on-line publication of the Economic History Association). March 2004.

Research in Progress

Rhetoric of Human and Life Sciences

Student's Methods: Science Before Fisher(book).

What does empirical research look like in an anti-foundational world, and can its findings connect to questions of efficiency and social justice? The life and times of William Sealy Gosset (1876-1937) say Yes. This book describes the scientific character of Gosset, the inventor of the t-test, a practical Bayesian, and the unknown father of economic significance. A marriage of philosophical pragmatism with Bayesian statistics can further Gosset’s twin yet neglected stances of anti-foundational epistemology and socially conscious science.

The New Applied Theory of Price (with Deirdre McCloskey). Third Edition (MacMillan). Microeconomic theory and applications. Suitable for first year graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

A Norton-anthology type book, designed to be a bedside reader for non-economist lovers of economics and literature.

“Recent Innovations for Charlie Brown’s Teacher: Some Uses of Fiction in Undergraduate Economics.”

Economic History:

Self-Reliance (book).

An economic and cultural history of the idea that privatizing welfare builds self- reliance among the poor. The context is urban and rural America, 19th and 20th
century.

“State Charities and Corrections: Civil War to the Great Depression”

Welfare and prisons grew up together, yet little is known about their history. This is a major data collection project on the so-called “state charities and corrections”—1860s to the New Deal.

“Sex and the City: Female Educational Attainment and the History of Marrying Up” (with Roderick Duncan).

The population of college educated women in the United States exceeds that of men by more than two million and the difference is rising. Yet women have a history of marrying men with more education–a tendency that rises in probability, the post-War evidence says, as women acquire more education. It’s like “Sex and the City,” the prophesy of James Thurber. The new season, a season of “marrying down,” or not at all, may carry implications for personnel policy, wage differentials, and the gender division of labor.

Major Archival Research Projects

Testing, Estimation, and the Design of Experiments -- the Scientific Contributions of William Sealy Gosset (1876-1937): Guinness Archives (Guinness Storehouse, Dublin); University College London Special Collections; Museum for English Rural Life (University of Reading, UK).

The History and Philosophy of Statistical Significance: University College London Special Collections (Karl Pearson, Egon Pearson, W. S. Gosset, Ronald Fisher, and Jerzy Neyman files); University of Chicago (Crerar, Regenstein, Eckhart); University of Illinois-Chicago (Health Sciences, Math, Science).

Classical Economics, Literary Representations, and the Rise and Fall of the Poorhouse: University of Iowa, Main Library, Government Publications; Emory University Woodruff Library, Government Publications; Bowling Green State University, Main Library, Government Publications; Indiana Historical Society Library; Indiana State Library; Iowa Historical Society Library.

“Public Assistance: Colonial Times to the 1920s.” Social Science History Conference, a panel on the millennial edition of The Historical Statistics of the United States. With Joan Underhill Hannon and Price Fishback. Fort Worth, TX, November 1999

“Pauper Fiction: Paupers in Almshouses and the Odd Fit of Oliver Twist, 1850-1923.” Fourth World Congress of Cliometrics, Montreal, July 6-9, 2000

“Measures of Poverty Across Time and Space: The Challenges of Building Historical and International Poverty Measures,” Social Science History Association, Pittsburgh, October 26-29, 2000.

“Standard Errors in the 1990s,” Eastern Economic Association, New York City, Feb. 2003

“Interpretative Econometrics from α to Ω: Heterodox Economics and the Resurrection of Economic Significance,” ICAPE Conference on the Future of Heterodox Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City, June 5-7, 2003.

“From Worthy Widows to Welfare Queens? The Elizabethan Poor Law and the Rhetoric of Relief in the Middle West,” 400 Years of Charity Conference, The Voluntary Action History Society, The University of Liverpool, and the Centre for Civil Society. University of Liverpool, September 11-13, 2001.

Iowa City Press-Citizen:Author article on “The Contradiction of Compassion,” 1995.

Service

Other Academic

Referee and reviewer: Economic Record, EH-Net, Feminist Economics, H-Net, The Independent Review, International Review of Social History, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Methodology, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Socio-Economics, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Review of Social Economy, Social Science History, Blackwell Publishers, Duxbury Press, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Prentice-Hall, National Science Foundation.

Conference Organizer: "Markets and Morals: The Rhetoric of a Middle Class," University of Iowa, October 6-7, 1995. With Gerald R. Bosch.

University & Departmental

(Roosevelt, Emory, Georgia Tech, and Bowling Green)

Roosevelt

Established a “Memorandum of Understanding” for the international exchange of faculty, administrators, and students of Roosevelt University and Academie Vitae (Deventer, The Netherlands). With Arjo Klamer (President and Founder of Academie Vitae), Rubee Li Fuller, and others. Spring 2006-Spring 2007.

Developed Quantitative Assessment System for Core Courses, Roosevelt University, School of Policy Studies, Spring 2004.

Archival Research Support, Bowling Green State University (SPAR, the College of Business Administration, and the Department of Economics), 1996-2001

Summer Research Grant, College of Business, Bowling Green State University, 1998

International Travel Award, Dupree School of Management (CIBER), Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001

Other Professional Experience

Caseworker: Marion County (Indianapolis) Department of Public Welfare, Summer 1987-Summer 1988. Conducted home visits to determine eligibility of new and on-going applicants for AFDC, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and miscellaneous services. Caseloads exceeded 125 homes per month.

Labor Market Analyst: Indiana Department of Employment and Training Services, Summer 1988-Summer 1991. Lead analyst of a team making long-term projections of industrial and occupational employment in Indiana’s labor market areas. In cooperation with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Research Assistant: Summer 1992-Fall 1994, University of Iowa, with D. N. McCloskey. Copyedited and assisted in the research of Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

I'm thinking these days about poverty and social policy, American economic history, and the rhetoric of the human sciences. My research has been published in a wide variety of journals and books, including the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Economic History, and Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to the Present (2006). The
Cult of Statistical Significance, my book with Deirdre McCloskey on the tragedy of statistical significance, is nearly out (forthcoming
Jan. 2008, University of Michigan Press).

It became clear to me during the archival research phase of the book that William Sealy Gosset (aka "Student"), the inventor of among other things the t-distribution, Monte Carlo analysis, alternative hypotheses, and the economicdesign of experiments, was working in the front ranks of science. Yet today Gosset is widely ignored if not plain unknown. Even frequent users of t-tables do not know who "Student" was. The eugencist Sir Ronald Fisher claimed to be Gosset's friend, and was. But Fisher published and copyrighted a distorted version of Gosset's technical contributions to scientific inference. In his struggle to become the great man of 20th century statistics, Fisher erased Gosset's economic, Bayesian, and confirmationist philosophy of inference, retaining only a skeleton of Gosset's powerful "test." A second book will tell why Gosset, a humble brewer of Guinness beer, should be widely known in economics, business, medicine, and other fields concerned with making profits and saving jobs and lives. The Gosset
test is uniformly more powerful than the Fisher test.

Other book projects concern the ideas and practices of self-reliance in American economic culture; state charities and corrections before the New Deal; economic criticism of English Literature; and haiku economics.